


supernova

by windingwoods



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Bluff City, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 19:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16980612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windingwoods/pseuds/windingwoods
Summary: Elena’s hands go still at her back, where she’s been trying to remove any stray glass shard from the fractured mess of Hilda’s wings for the past twenty or so minutes. Hilda suspects it might be an excuse, but she still won’t turn to look at her, not when turning means having to see the goddamn— painting thing again.





	supernova

**Author's Note:**

> u know i had to do it. these kids are gay and good and i'm dead.

The truth is, Hilda doesn’t remember much at all of what happened after barreling up in the sky in an explosion of light. She knows she started falling, impossibly fast, with the wind whistling in her ears, and she knows at some point she stopped falling (something white and grey and glinting in the moonlight, the flutter of wings that were not her own) only to hit the water _hard_. Her neck still hurts from the impact, but it’s not broken.

After that she mostly remembers weight: the weight of her broken wings dragging her down, the weight of the water she’d inhaled. Maybe the weight of someone’s hand wrapping around her ankle, but she’d already started to slip by then.

“Elena?” she asks, trying not to think of the fire lapping at her lungs from the inside out as she’d been gasping for air on the backseat of their amphibious car earlier. “Did you rescue me?”

Elena’s hands go still at her back, where she’s been trying to remove any stray glass shard from the fractured mess of Hilda’s wings for the past twenty or so minutes. Hilda suspects it might be an excuse, but she still won’t turn to look at her, not when turning means having to see the goddamn— painting thing again.

When Elena speaks, her voice sounds somewhat rueful. “Yup, it was me. Chanty had already done… enough and Franklin was busy being Franklin.” Then, quieter, “you don’t remember?”

Hilda registers the way Chanty balls up her fists in the corner of her eye and files it as a conversation to have later. Whatever this moment is, it comes first. “I think I remember your hand. And your voice? Were you saying something to me?”

She’d been too out of it, in too much pain to really catch Elena’s words but she does remember hearing something, mumbled over and over again in the shell of her ear as they made their way back to the arcade. It makes her flush, cursed painting and inadequacy forgotten for a brief moment.

“I, uh,” Elena stammers, going back to picking glass shards from her wings, “yeah? I was, um, kinda freaked out? You _almost died_.”

“If you want to go there I reckon Franklin beat me on that front.”

“That’s not how any of that w—”

“Hey, Elena.” Hilda tries not to sound shaky, with mixed results. It’s pretty hard to hold herself together after being told by a little girl in a painting just how much of an eyesore she is, how improper of a display her wings are. “Could you, ah, come here? In front of me?”

Elena makes a questioning noise, but she side-steps the old stool Hilda’s slumped on to get in front of her anyway. “Are you okay?”

Her concerned frown is calming, reassuring. Hilda takes the time to compare every little detail to the pale, perfect face of little Gale Green: brown skin, chapped lips, caked blood from a cut on her cheek, dark eyes, the two moles on her left temple.

“You’re pretty,” she finds herself whispering. Elena looks positively starstruck for a moment and it’s beautiful, frozen in place only for the two of them, but Hilda’s not done ruining things for the night so she says, “do you think I’m unsightly?”

“You… what?” The frown’s back in full swing, and it hurts just a tiny bit. “ _No_? God, Hilda, you’re, like, you’re a star!”

Well, that stings.

“More like I’m an exploding supernova.” She tries to give a shake of her wings, winces when they creak in protest and some more glass shatters on the floor at her feet.

Elena doesn’t waver, though. Elena never wavers.

“Supernova or whatever, I would still look at you,” she says, and Hilda’s breathless all over again. Only this time it’s not her lungs that burn, but the whole of her face. She thinks dully that her ears must be bright red right now.

At least she’s not the only one who’s on fire, considering how Elena excuses herself to go grab the vacuum cleaner with a strangled sound in the back of her throat. Hilda watches her go, feeling lighter.

“Thank you,” she says, almost inaudible. She’s sure Elena will hear it.


End file.
